property and the graffiti. there could be separate complaints for all those. >> but it would be the same list of complaints either way sounds like. >> yes. >> if there's no further discussion, we could have the department's rebuttal. >> i lead my time, thank you. >> three minutes for the appellant for rebuttal. >> thank you for the opportunity [inaudible]. first of all, i think all my utility bill for 641 documents that there is continuous occupancy. i $641 documents that there is continuous occupancy. i don't see anywhere for $5 [inaudible]. that may be for the power next door, 645 because at one point

to save money i decide not -- i use that for reading and to store some of my belongings and stuff so here was no point to maintain that water bill and electricity so i [inaudible]. and i think i just pay for the past four months i pay over 1000 to pge for my bills. in terms of the broken glass in the front of -- just above the garage, it's not a window. that happened because two months ago there were raccoons at night so i fire off my

[inaudible] to try to scare them away. that was what i used to do with my younger brother when we were small. but i missed the ra raccoons so you see the glass panel. so my contractor taken measure and will be repaning that. i also had planning for painting the outside and repainting some other windows. the last permit i got from the city in 2008, at the end -- in december 2008 was to replace 11 windows for fiberglass windows because all the other windows were aluminum or plastic, or vinyl because of the coastal climate. and another point, after the fire, i mention briefly

earlier, we have some compost in the backyard from the tree branches and leaves [inaudible] asked me to create so we kree create all that, about 40,000 pounds of part of the burned trees to during that period of time and that met with his approval and satisfaction. and i actually sent another email to him and inspector cohen to thank them for all their help during the past six month of last year. >> thank you. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> i feel the [inaudible] plans on the west side even though i didn't like the idea of the metal frames and that also met

with the approval of the fire inspector and the building inspector and i repair part of wood fence to the north with redwood and of course, the graffiti up here within days and i have been painting every month, every six weeks. >> thank you, thanks very much. can we have some public comment? is there any public comment? come up to the -- >> you can come up to the microphone. come up to the microphone and introduce yourself. >> wayne is my deer friend so -- dear friend -- my late husband is pathology in va hospital. we've been very old friends. in october of last year i moved in with him so i help him to

repair the fence, repair wherever need to repair because i have connection with my contractors so with that everything is restored to a living -- how do you say livable condition. it was very filthy inside, but it was always occupied non stop, but there were periods of time his father was ill so he had to take care of his father in hong kong for, you know, big past year or sometimes even longer, but that is something every son has to do so honestly, that place is habitable, is in very good condition. we already booked several -- roofing, painting scaffolding and window company to repair the whole thing and with my help so if someone say this building or this house is abandoned or it's not up to the

code, whatever, i think that someone needs to take a close r look. thank you. >> thank you. any further discussion amongst commissioners? >> maybe just a question for the staff. inspector, the pictures in front of us because they said they've done some work on the fence, they've done some work on the windows. when was the last inspection or -- >> you may have noticed i didn't refer to the fact that they did some work on the fence at the rear because they didn't get a per fit from us. technically we should write a notice of violation for doing the work on that fence without a permit, but i acknowledge that they have [inaudible] the fence at the rear corner and that's progress. if they continue, will hopefully get a permit to

continue replacing the fence as they have done at the corner and replace it all the way up the length of the lot where it joins the public way. also, there was a question about the utility bills. this is a bill from march 21 to april 21 of this year, just as a reference and you can see the amount for the gas is $3.50. if the building is occupied [inaudible] would be more than that if it was a gas stove so that's the type of issue we are up to that we are not getting any supporting documents that would indicate that the building is continuously occupied. >> commissioner melgar. >> you know, i just want to sort of separate the issues a

little bit. i really appreciate inspector's description between abandoned and vacant. i think it confuses the issue. if these properties were really taken care of and were vacant we wouldn't be here today. it doesn't sound like there's an economic issue here, an issue of hardship. it seems if the property owner is able to afford to keep an entire property in san francisco just for reading, you know, it's possible to give it a paint job once in a while. i would be for putting a timeline on this. it sounds like the property owner is already moving, you know, beyond whatever family issues were preventing him from dealing with these things and there's contractors lined up and that's great progress. i think that's what we want him

to do, but i would be for putting a timeline in place to make sure it does happen so... >> i concur. i think that if indeed there is process in getting there, we could do a similar type of resolution to our previous cases, up holding the order of abatement and then giving him three or four months. can you give us an update of what the fees are attached to this at this juncture? >> the fees are a little bit lower than the norm. i think it's 5 or 600. >> yeah. >> commissioner mar. >> inspector, what do you think is a reasonable amount of time to get external -- >> yeah, i'm not as concerned about the fees, but also the -- what's the reasonable amount of time to get all the work done,

especially the exeter ternal work to abate the order. >> two or three months should be reasonable. >> it's really just the fence, windows an rejation. vegetation. >> and to repaint most of the building because of the peeling paint. >> so three months. >> i have a question for the board. a part of the order of abatement requires the homeowner to register with abandoned property registry. is that still required or are we going to modify it to not -- >> could i suggest that we ask the department to inspect the premises and determine whether it needs to be registered as a vacant building or whether it needs to be fully compliant with inhabiting? >> if there's one minor outstanding maintenance issue

involved, the building stays on the vehicle abandoning list and they would need to register. as the city attorney pointed out, the order of abatement did request they register the building. >> their position is they're living in it so i think that we -- >> they haven't sub stain chated that. stantiated that. that's the problem. >> maybe we need to determine whether it needs to be registered on the list or not. >> because of the maintenance issues, they need to register it as vacant or abandoned or both. in this case if they register it they would be registering it as abandoned and then as they dpeel deal with the maintenance issues, as the

permits are in place, the building is looking as reasonably new, they get the permits signed off and we talk them off the list once they pay any outstanding fees and the neighbors in that beautiful neighborhood would be happy and we'll all be happy. >> do we cite properties for bliet? blight? >> that's another gray area. the blight ordinance was put in with the department of public works so they deal with blight and such, but once they've cited it opens up more avenues for us to cite additional issues. >> i'm wondering why wouldn't the department have cited this building for blight rather than abandoned building. >> the blight ordinance came within about a month of one another and it was decided that with the blight ordinance it

got divided between building housing, public health and dpw. we could go out there and we could cite them for blight. for instance, the -- more than likely the paint that's out there right now is led so we get them on a led ordinance, but there's a whole host of problems out there. we were told about this -- we learned about this property through the headlines of the san francisco examiner a couple years ago and by that point it appeared to us that it was a vacant building. >> commissioner mar. >> well, i'm going to try to make a motion and see if this will work. i would like to move that we up hold the order of abatement, up hold the assessment of costs and give the owner three months

to rectify the violations based on the fact we feel it's an abandoned building. if they want to show us otherwise, and it'll show us more than that $3 pge bill to show us otherwise, then we would go in and inspect it as an occupied building with the caveat that the owner should realize they then may be required to do more work if they insist it is occupied because then we'd have to look more closely at -- i feel, if we're going to do the internal inspection, there might be possible other work to be done. it's up to them if they want to pursue that, but right now in front of us is the fact that it's an abandoned building.

>> can i ask -- because i support the first part of the motion. i don't support the second one. i think that's overkill and i'm wondering -- >> it wouldn't be included. >> help me out here. if we uphold the abandoned notice of violation, does that mean the only way they get out of it is by having an interior inspection? is that the only way? >> they have the option of providing additional utility bills that will be reasonably substantiated if the building is continuously occupied or they could volunteer to invite

us into the property and verify that what we see would constitute that it's continuously occupied. >> there's two options, two ways out of it. one is to provide utility bills that show that there's utilities being used. the second would be to invite -- >> with the understanding that the maintenance issues are still additional.

>> if the homeowners go through the process of getting the building up to standards to something pleasant or something everybody can live with, do we still need them to register as an abandoned build? can we just waive that if that is the case? because if they don't fix it up, then it's kind of obvious that -- >> i don't want [inaudible] off the record, but if that building looks like the beautiful building surrounding

it, then if someone asks me to take it off then that's what i'll do. >> we need to give the appellant time to do the work, if we gave them 30 days, which is probably enough, or 60 days and if he fixes all the maintenance issues and gives us proof that that month his utility bills are normal, we could take it off the bill -- >> i think there's a motion -- >> the motion was three months so it should be plenty of time -- paint, windows and fence and clean up. >> i think a lot of this problem goes away once you get rid of the blight and that's what's being gained here is -- >> we have a motion and second. >> is there public comment on -- any general public comment?

seeing none, we'll do a roll call vote on the motion. >> she's already had -- you've already had your public comment. you've had your public comment. that's the case with anybody else. thank you. >> thank you. >> okay. roll call vote on the motion. president clinch. >> yes. >> melgar. . yes. >> commissioner mccarthy. >> yes. >> commissioner mar. >> lee. >> yes. >> mcray. >> yes. >> walker. >> yes. >> motion carries unanimously. item 3, case number 6790, 280 union street, san francisco, california. action requested by appellant is to modify the order of abatement to waive the assessment of cost, request to expedite permit approval. >> and this is a three story,

three unit building. the violation, guardrails approved under permit application under 8707964 we are removed without permit. there was an order of abatement issued june 28 of last year. therefore staff recommends to up hold order of abatement and impose assessment of trust. that -- >> thank you, is there anybody here from the appellant? >> thank you commissioners. my name is clinton choi and i'm

the owner of 284 union street and i also am the president of our condo association, 280 union condo association which is made up of three owners. my understanding is we are subjected to a penalty for not replacing the para pit wall in a timely manner. what we are here to say is that we are requesting that the penalty fee be waived because we've actually engaged in this permit approval process over the last two years. we live in a landmark preservation area and therefore we are subject to the certificate of appropriateness rules and regulations. if you take a look at the records you can see there were a number of instances and opportunities for us to engage in hearings, to engage in acts

of action -- let's say action issues. and i think all three of the owners have been very proactive over the last two years. we still don't have a permit so when the building department tells us there's a building violation and abatement, we say give us [inaudible] but each time the building department have their own requirements and as a result, one would say you have to fulfill all requirements because the requirements of the other department doesn't involve us. so this actually took a two year process. also, initially we were told a certification of appropriateness was not necessary so we went by that understanding so when we went to apply for a permit, we were told that it was denied ied because we needed a certificate of appropriateness.

we spent time doing research. there's a woman by the name of kim, who told us a permit was not required if we were merely replacing a deck that was removed in order for us to repair the top surface of our roof so she said as long as it's a replacement there's no need for certificate of appropriateness. so there was one episode where we actually went to the planning department, we were at the desk and we were denied saying you have to go through the certification of appropriateness. by coincidence, both kimberly and joe duffy were there and supported us by saying it's not necessary. all they're doing is replacing that which was in existence so the person at the desk says okay, there's no need for appropriateness? and they said yes.

so okay, we pay the process for the paperwork, the second floor says denied. you have to go through certificate of appropriateness. we just spent an hour downstairs and told it was not necessary. the reason why this thing has spanned over two years because we were going through the planning department and building department, certificate of appropriateness and at one point even ed sweeney had told us this is pretty common because we live in a landmark neighborhood. what frustrated the permit process is because of opportunities to give neighbors an appeal. we have one neighbors filing complaints and that frustrated the permit process. in every single one of those complaints there was absolutely no foundation, it was unsubstantiated and ed sweeney said to me on a telephone

conversation along with joe duffy, they said we have spent an [inaudible] and the roof deck. well, by just last week, we were told that the permit was approved finally and we certainly appreciate that. we're hoping this is an opportunity to get the wall and deck built. there are some extenuating circumstances that i also want to bring to the commission's attention and that is that one of our owners was trying to reenter the united states from yuan europe and was told that she could not do that right away because there was an abatement assessed on her property and as a result she had to go through -- yes, she had to go through some issues

with the customs department to explain that we were trying to get this thing resolved and u.s. customs was saying this is on your name. we're trying to find a way to take this issue off her name and place it on to the condo association itself. that might be a side issue, but you can see that that, along with the fact that perhaps the construction costs two year ago was cheaper than it is today. the appraisal of my property was lower because without that deck they were saying that there's probably some money involved in terms of loss in the value of our property so there's a lot of extenuating circumstances we have to face. in short what we'd be asking the commission is to waive that fee and allow us to build the para pit wall and the deck that we've been waiting to do and enjoy over the last two years. thank you.

>> i'm the [inaudible] owner of 280 [inaudible]. i mean, we've done everything to try and permit and get the deck replaced as soon as possible because it's in our advantage. we want the deck there to use. the decks were removed because the roof leaked and would not move into the property until the roof was repaired. we've been trying continually to get the decks rebuilt. i'm concerned she's been abated and has no legal right to parts of the roof because the roof is divided into owner and she's been abated for the whole lot and [inaudible] so she has no

right, no [inaudible]. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> any discussion among the commissioners? >> i'll start. does that mean the permit that has been approved gets issued, that would result the violation? >> yeah, the permit was approved on the may 6. it's a [inaudible] -- >> i find that strange, but to your question, if it is issued and they get the work done timely and get the permit signed up it will clear the violation. >> and in question to the owners, when are you going to pick up the permit? >> come up to the microphone please. >> the reason why it isn't picked up yet is